


This Mortal Coil

by comtessedebussy



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 18:10:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13416774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comtessedebussy/pseuds/comtessedebussy
Summary: Back on Discovery, Ash Tyler remembers his captivity and torture at the hands of L'Rell...and why she chose him to hide the personality of Voq, who now fights Ash for control of his own body and mind.Spoilers up to "The Wolf Inside." Please heed the tags- Ash has not had a nice time with the Klingons.





	This Mortal Coil

**Author's Note:**

> So the backstory of how exactly Voq was turned human and given Ash's personality is a bit muddled, but it seems clear that Ash's personality and memories are, in one way or another, in that body along with him. So I thought I'd explore, from his perspective, why it was Ash who was chosen as a decoy to smuggle Voq onto Discovery as a sleeper agent, and what he remembers. I like to think Ash's personality is still in that body somewhere, and that this isn't the last we've seen of him.

He will fight.

He will also break. He is under no illusions that he will persevere on the strength of his willpower alone. That’s not how this works. No one survives Klingon torture.

There are limits to any being, human or Klingon. Eventually, he will break, and beg for it to all be over.

He will die a slow and painful death. There is no rescue coming for him. In all likelihood, no one knows that he is here, and even if they do, the Federation has greater problems – the oncoming Klingon onslaught – than a prisoner of war.

But until then, he will fight, and leave them with no doubt that humans are a force to be reckoned with.

….

He had watched old Earth films, from the twentieth century, where the stalwart hero tells his torturer “I will not give you the satisfaction of screaming.” How silly he’d thought them, even then. He doesn’t scream at first, but like everything else, it’s only a matter of time. There is only so much pain a human body can contain before it has to burst forth in some ways, screaming or thrashing or, eventually – in some not-so-distant future – begging.

Blood slicks all the surfaces, his hazy vision dims the lights, and he feels feverish, week, as with a flu that humans had eradicated centuries ago.

 _She_ swims through his vision briefly.

“He is strong,” L’Rell says with admiration, and he knows she will take joy in breaking him.

…..

She is supremely content, when he is dragged to her quarters. Still bloody, and his body still broken, though his mind not quite yet. They have sealed his wounds enough to keep him breathing, but his body aches everywhere he can feel it.

She paces towards him, but the back of her hand on his cheek is strangely gentle. He wants to flinch from it. Wonders if that would be a show of weakness or strength. He doesn’t have the strength for those mental gymnastics, not anymore.

She tilts her head.

“You are…not unlike a Klingon,” she muses.

“I’m nothing like you,” he spits at her.

“You fought, as humans do not fight. You have a strength that I had thought humans incapable of.”

“Then you underestimated us,” he challenges her. “Humans - They’ll defeat you, because they’re just as strong, and as fierce, and they also have what you don’t. What you’ll never understand. I’ll die here, but so will you, one day.”

He expects a blow for his insolence, but she merely hums  – at least, that’s what he thinks it is, but it sounds more like a growl – and says “We shall see.”

Her hands trace his body, his chest and torso.  “You please me,” she murmurs, like a tiger purring, and in that moment, he sees how to survive this.

He balks at it. He does not want to _give in,_ to submit in the cowardly hope of merely continuing to draw breath.

But the alternative is to die for nothing. Or for honor, perhaps, as a Klingon would. A Klingon would never give into such advances, their pride would be too great to be _demeaned_ like that. They would rather die.

But he is not a Klingon. He chooses to _live._

He meets her eyes. He knows what she wants, what it would please her to see in a human.

“Get off me,” he orders. His voice hardly has the desired impact, hoarse from screaming. She doesn’t obey, of course, and he forces her hands off her with his own.

He fights with the entirety of his meager, broken strength. He is well-trained, knows a Klingon’s weak points, but their fight does not last long, weak and starved as he is. Finally, she pins him down.

“You will be _mine,_ ” she says.

“ _Never,_ ” he snarls what he knows she wants to hear.

…..

He is in her bed again, as almost every night for however long he’s been a prisoner here. As usual, his body is covered in marks, some scars, while others wounds barely healed over. Klingons care little for aesthetics, and L’Rell shares that sentiment. His body is a tool.

They have sliced him open today, his limbs and his chest, and then once they had sliced open, they continued to slice open, his organs, his muscles, until he screamed himself hoarse and thought he would die.

By comparison, this bed is almost a relief. He feels ashamed for thinking it, but had he the choice right now, he could not, _would_ not choose the cold steel slicing him open.

She does not demand much from him; for the most part, she is merely content to take, and if he believed in a higher power, he would thank it for small mercies.

The first few times, he had resisted, and it had seemed to satisfy her, his futile thrashing beneath him.

Now, he lies in her bed and closes his eyes. If he does not see her, if he can escape to the depths of his mind, he can will his body to react to hers as he would to a lover’s. He has never been in love, but he has had lovers, attentive ones, and she is attentive enough to make his body pleasing for herself. If only he lets himself believe this fiction.

There are nights when he cannot, and it angers her.

“You are _weak,_ ” she sneers. “Weak as a human!”

Despair curls in his chest at her disappointment, and he does not know anymore whether it is a survival instinct or something else. But either way, he hates feeling that he has disappointed her.

….

She never leaves him, even back on _Discovery._ She is there, in his nightmares, and in his waking hours too.

But there are new memories that come back, too. At first, he confuses them with the nightmares and the flashbacks, but they stand out. Memories of being changed. Being _different._ Not being human, and not being himself.

He fights, harder than he has ever fought, but he can feel himself slipping away. He is no longer Lieutenant Ash Tyler.

He is Voq.

 _You are….not unlike a Klingon,_ is the last memory Ash Tyler remembers.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I have plenty more angsty Ash Tyler headcanons on Tumblr: comtessedebussy.tumblr.com


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